Galvin crop

If you frequently find yourself a frequenter of coffee shops, you’re aware of certain essential truths:

1. It’s very often the SAME coffee shop, often at the SAME time of the day, days of the week and, if you’re really being anal about it, your keister is planted in the SAME chair.

2. You realize you are part of the shop’s story. You know staff members names, they might know yours (more likely your usual) and, even if neither of you remembers, there’s a a good chance you’ll recognize each other.

3. The drink doesn’t really matter.

Well, sure, No. 3 stretches the point a wee bit, but the fact is if you truly are a frequenter of coffee shops, you’re often there because — whether you realize it or not — you’ve made a choice, let down your social barriers, joined a family.

There was a death in the family recently … and it hurts.

GoodBean Coffee closed its Medford location unexpectedly at the end of November for undisclosed reasons but, as the owners posted on its Facebook page, “very unfortunate circumstances beyond GoodBean’s control.”

One day, the shop up the road from Roxy Ann Winery — or down the hill from Roxy Ann Peak, depending on your preference — was still greeting customers, pouring drinks, serving breakfast and lunch, and playing host to a family of regulars, who sat inside at tables or outside on patio furniture.

The next day … gone.

“If Medford was your home store,” the Facebook post continued, “please leave words of kindness for our staff there who made it the amazing place it was.”

And members of this GoodBean community did — as of this writing, nearly 200 responses from those who appreciated that amazing place, and almost 400 emojis noting sadness, shock, and caring about the loss.

One response talked about spending precious time with her mother, while another wrote about bringing the kids in for breakfast. Two friends shared memories of studying for nursing school, while one poster recalled the coffee shop had been where she and her now husband had gone on their first date.

And that’s what makes places like the GoodBean stand out from those where you quickly stop in to grab a drink, or be hit with a whiff of pretentiousness and a lingering note of condescension over the drink you are about to savor.

Medford’s GoodBean, of course, had fine coffee, and mochas, espresso drinks, teas etc. — which should be expected of any shop worth its salt. But, as is the case with Rogue Valley Roasting Co. in Ashland, it was a place greater than the sum of its parts.

Each is a destination shop: Not downtown in convenient location(s), but a place you willingly make an effort to visit because of the atmosphere.

Obviously, this closure hit home. More than a few of the pieces you might have read in this spot (and before that, in the Mail Tribune) were written at the GoodBean — usually at a corner table, fortified with an iced tea and a couple of shortbreads or, occasionally, a side order of what to my unsophisticated palate was the best bacon in the valley.

It was where I’d meet with former co-workers, or where we’d make weekend visits and take visitors — proving, I guess, that we know quite a few people for whom coffee shops are part of their lives.

This seems, I suppose, like a lot of ink to spill over the loss of a coffee shop. Life will go on, with habit adjustments. Caffeine will be consumed, somewhere.

The folks behind GoodBean reminded those visiting their Facebook page that the Jacksonville store remains in operation, and that coffee beans for home brewing still will be roasted in Medford and sold locally.

But sometimes, the loss of a favorite coffee shop — or restaurant, or store — is the loss of something more integral to the day-to-day than simply an exchange of goods or services.

As the saying goes, for those who understand, no explanation is necessary; for those who don’t, no explanation is possible.

You had to be there.